Here’s the video in which Eric Holder ends by saying that we have to “brainwash” young people into new attitudes about guns:

I am no Eric Holder fan. I think he’s very busy now trying to destroy both the Justice Department and the abstract notion of justice within the United States. I would love to have caught him in a “gotcha” moment. But the above video is not that moment.

Holder’s point is a good one, which is that our youth culture, especially our black youth culture, has long been inundated with images of guns, not as tools for food and safety, but as symbols of power. Yes, guns do make one powerful. That’s why women should look to guns for self-defense, because they do level the playing field. But for many, many years, with ultra-liberal Hollywood accelerating the process in the last couple of decades, guns aren’t being sold to the youth of America as an integral part of the rights of free people, enabling them to feed themselves and stave off the attacks of the more powerful. Instead, they’re about glamor and death, in a culture that has little value for human life.

Even Holder’s use of the word “brainwash,” which is not a high-use word in the conservative vocabulary, makes some sense in the context of his speech. Hollywood is now and has been “brainwashing” America’s youth for decades, insofar as it has created an overwhelmingly pervasive and powerful paradigm about the glamor of guns, a paradigm that relies on emotional pressure to override all other considerations. Reclaiming those damaged youthful brains is an effort.

So no, nothing Holder said is wrong. Of course, what Holder’s done since that speech, especially in the form of Operation Fast and Furious is wrong, both morally and legally. And you and I both know that Holder, given the chance would cheerfully do away with the Second Amendment without a moment of hesitation. To him, changing the gun culture means doing away with guns entirely, which is an impossible task because totalitarian governments and individual evil actors will always have guns. To us, changing the gun culture means teaching people to revere their freedoms and to recognize that guns are an integral part of maintaining those freedoms — provided that our citizens understand that guns are tools, not deadly fashion accessories.

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HOLDER: (Thinking aloud) Hey maybe we should brainwash people with the whole Thou Shalt Not Kill “meme”. That intrinsic value of human life thing . . .

Lackey: Isn’t that one of the Ten Commandments?

HOLDER: Oh wait, can’t do that now can we. Separation of Church and State. So, how bout we focus only on the instrumentality, rather than the actor?

Lackey: ???

HOLDER: Guns are bad M’kay.

Lackey: Got it. No guns. No problems. I think things were pretty peaceful in the dark ages right?

Holder; Shut up.

Mike Devx

Nice one, SimpleMind! I like the dialogue with the “generic” Lackey! There’s plenty more fun to be had with that one! Not just with Holder. It works for Obama, it works for Napolitano… it works for them all!

http://ymarsakar.wordpress.com Ymarsakar

Evil bureaucrats should be 1. killed 2. removed

Danny Lemieux

I agree with you, Book. Our side loses credibility when we take comments from the other side out of context and try to get people worked up about them. There is so much of real concern to focus upon regarding this administration without trying to make stuff up.

socratease

I disagree. Call me old-fashioned, but I thought the job of a District Attorney was to prosecute criminals, not to leverage his elected office in order to change society. There’s a word for when the government uses the public treasury to publish material and its influence to warp popular media in order to mold society in a way it finds advantageous: Propaganda. One has to wonder just which other Constitutional Rights AG Holder thinks the government should bend its resources to persuading people from exercising.

To a large extent, the popular image of guns and gun ownership is the product of the liberal outlook and its policies which has brought us to the point where the image of a person with a gun brings to mind only one of two possibilities: a cop, or a criminal. The image of a peaceful, law-abiding gun owner has disappeared from popular fiction, and laws about the ownership, purchase, storage, and use of guns has followed the same path. In my area gun stores have been driven out of business, and the ones left are zoned like they were porn shops. Liberals like Holder have been successful in largely removing the gun culture from its historical place as a part of normal American life, along with the social pressure it produced which counseled owners towards safe and peaceful exercises, and now liberals complain about what they have left.

http://ymarsakar.wordpress.com Ymarsakar

This is much like the issue with Obama’s EO about “martial law” and “emergencies”. Everything the Left does is to set up Final Hour. Nothing they do is “harmless”. It is always a chess move that 100 years later, will be used as a weapon even if nobody realized it could ever be used as a weapon.

The only reason why Republicans and conservatives care about “credibility” is because they think this is still about a debate, an issue that is based upon convincing people to side with one over another. The Left long ago discarded that paradigm. A war isn’t necessarily going to use credibility for much of anything. Successes on the battlefield are one’s credibility, and that’s all one needs for the most part.

Raven

I have to disagree also. I live in a very liberal state where law-abiding citizens are TERRIFIED to have guns in their homes, especially with children. We’ve allowed ourselves to be subtly “brainwashed” into thinking we don’t really need guns ~ that they’re too dangerous to have. Stories filled the media of tragic “accidents” involving children ~ the result of “irresponsible parents & gun owners.” Even our attitudes about buying “toy guns” for our children changed. All this was very subtle “conditioning” brought on by a liberal media. It was about our children’s safety & being a well-informed responsible parent.
Holder is a “progressive.” He has an agenda: to disarm all law-abiding citizens. We all know criminals can get guns quite easily. Holder’s using “the children” as a way of changing people’s attitudes about guns, so that CITIZENS will no longer have them. It has become very difficult & expensive to get a gun permit here.
According to the Constitution, ALL CITIZENS have the “right” to bear arms. Why? To PROTECT our lives, our families & our property. So why all the gun laws? The permits? The fees? The waiting period? The government has no business knowing who has guns ~PERIOD. Only violent criminals & the criminally insane should be disarmed.
Holder mentioned smoking & how attitudes about smoking have changed ~ as well as our “attitudes” TOWARDS smokers. Was that part of the intent also? It’s not just about changing bad “behaviors” but changing our “attitudes” about a select group of people as well. That can be a dangerous thing. A form of CONTROL that the government has over its people.
Every state isn’t the same. Those who live in remote areas and can’t rely on 911 in an emergency and have to protect themselves. And GUN CONTROL by the Justice Dept is what Fast & Furious was all about!

http://ymarsakar.wordpress.com Ymarsakar

EngSoc was about controlling thought, not language. Even in Chicago, home of Obama and the Brave Democrats, teenagers that make Straight As get beat on the head with a 4 by 4 and killed. And the mob bosses there look on while they’re counting the gold coins in their pockets.

http://ymarsakar.wordpress.com Ymarsakar

Fast and Furious was also started under Bush. The same people that say that we have limited resources and shouldn’t worry about Obama’s Executive Orders, are taking the Left lightly, to say the least. Did they predict what the Left would do with Fast and Furious? And they think they can predict what the Left will do with their new and improved EO, one that took work to write and implement, whereas Obama is lazy as hell and can’t even it get up long enough to get Congress to declare war on Libya?

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